An Easy Way To 3D Movies…
It’s a rainy morning. You wake up and are in the mood for something creative in your computer. You open Windows Movie Maker, but it is not what you wanted… You want to make something more advanced… But how? It is important to know that... There is a contemporary, and easy, way to create 3D animated videos, without the use of any special programs and the creation of 3D models, and after that the hard time animating them. It is widely known as “Machinima”. Machinima is based on using the ready models of various computer games. All it requires is the game, a model and map-viewer of that game, a picture editing program, an in-computer recorder, and a video editing program. The preferred video editing program is Adobe Premiere. It has a special function, namely the ability to erase specific colors from the clip or image you add, leaving only the animation, or preferred piece of the image, into the clip. This function is known as “keying”. Except that kind of program, you need an in-computer recorder. I suggest the very well known, Fraps. It can record anything you do in the computer, in a highly detailed and high quality video file. But, with great quality, comes great file size, which means that a 5 minute Frap recorded video, can be up to 500 megabytes. That can be a problem. There are other various programs of that kind on the internet you might prefer, and a lot of them freeware too. Fraps is not free; it requires payment. You can also download it illegally, that could be a solution too… Now, about the model-viewer: only some of these games have model viewers. The most widely known Machinima-related game is the World of Warcraft, which has a model-viewer. Through model-viewers, you can browse the model files of a game. They show up as a drop-down list. From that list, you can find a model that can match the object you want to use in your movie. Almost every model has its animation. In almost every game model-viewer there are walking and running animations. As far as the game map-viewers are concerned we will be using World of Warcraft as a game example. Through a map viewer anyone, as long as the game files exist, can view the areas of the game and take clips or pictures of them, so that the video planned to be created has along with the 3D game models, areas that are related to them. To screenshot a spot, for example, just use the good and old fashioned Print Screen button of the keyboard and, if you are a Windows user, use the old but still effective Microsoft Paint, or any other picture editing program you want to edit the screenshot you took and pasted into it. So we have a clip of the animation, the map-viewer shot area or a picture, inspiration and good ideas for a video and good mood to be patient to achieve the best of our skills and make our first 3D animated movie… Let’s revise what we have and how we got those, and start the creation!! The Idea... thumb First of all, we need an interesting idea for a movie. For now we should just make a person walk. You can either find a picture of a road, or open the map-viewer of the game and find a place with a road. If you are using the map-viewer, push Print Screen after you press “F4” to remove the numbers around the screen, and then go to Microsoft Paint, or any other picture editing program you use and paste the shot. Adjust the picture limits to the desired size. Save and close. Now it’s time to choose our animation. If you open WoW model-viewer, the second main dropdown list is named characters. That is the main one we will be using to find a model that looks like a living creature. If you’ve played World of Warcraft, probably know the main races available. If not, allow me to explain. Normally there are 10 playable but in the model-viewer there is those 10, plus 6 that appear very often. Most of them have both a male and a female version. There are Humans, generally normal living beings, dwarves, you know… short and beardy, gnomes, extremely short and cute little fellas with colorful hair and beards ranging from pink to green colors, night elves, blue skinned and very tall and sharp eared beings, and the weird draenei, somewhat aliens, who are big and blue with crystal horns and hair and hooves instead of feet. There are also the orcs, green and muscled with ugly sometimes dog faces, trolls, tall and green with funky hair and two toes in each foot, taurens, a creature that is probably a combination of a human and a cow (I’m not telling you more about their looks, see for yourself and laugh…). Undead, nightmarish skeleton-like beings with grey and rotting skin, having bones being shown (in the model-viewer the drop down list is named “Scourge”), and finally blood elves, with green glowing eyes, big and pointy ears, and normal human colored skin. Those are the main playable. There are also skeletons, which share animations with the undead; there are the broken, which share animations with the tauren and look like draenei, but are shorter and weaker. Forest-Trolls can also be found, which share animations with the trolls and are like them, but are still bigger and more massive. Fel-Orcs have the same animations as the Orcs, but are red and have weapons instead of hands (woooo!!). The other two, the Goblins and the Naga, have their own animations. Goblins are short and green creatures with huge smiles and Naga are fish-faced creatures with tails instead of legs, and blue or green colored scales. Those are all the main models that are the most useful. As I said, almost each one has its own animations. Creating You can freely browse through them. Now, let’s choose a Human Male. Equip him with some clothes. Use the menu above the “wardrobe” to edit his physical characteristics, like eyes, skin color, and more. If you look under the space the model is shown you will notice a white space with an arrow next to it. Click on it and browse through the animations to find what you are looking for. For now, choose Walk. Our little friend will keep walking, so let’s call him Johnny for now, until you press “stop” or “pause” or change the animation. Use the buttons at the right of the screen to dress him up. Now we have a wonderful Johnny. Press “View” from the toolbar above and then Load Background. Choose the image we took before from the map-viewer or the road picture, and it will be displayed as a background in which Johnny animates. Right-click and drag to move him around the picture, or left-click and drag to change the direction he’s facing. Don’t forget to have him loop the walking animation. Put him in the right place and right direction so that his size fits the picture we used as a background. When you are done, keep him there, don’t move him, let him moon-walk, and remove the background picture. Make the background color blue, if it is not already. Now, open up Fraps. Its interface can be opened by clicking its icon at the right of the taskbar. Go to video options and choose to make the fps number invisible. Also, assign a recording start and stop button that is convenient to press and doesn’t serve any other functions, for instance the ` button. Go to the model-viewer where Johnny keeps moon-walking. If we want to make it realistic, we need him to move while walking. Depending on the picture you used, move him while having him facing the right direction and, if you want, use the middle button to zoom in or out. Record! thumb|left So, do you believe you are ready to record? OK… Press the button you assigned to Fraps and start recording. Move Johnny using the right-click. When you are done, press the assigned button to stop recording. Check the recorded video which is saved on the Fraps folder in either C:\ or Program Files. If you believe it was not good, delete it and record again. You should be able to start compiling the movie now… First of all, open up Adobe Premiere. Go to File and Import and pick up the clip you just recorded and the picture of the road. Put each one in different time lines. Now go to the Effects tab. Go to the Video Effects list and then select Keying. Choose the Blue Screen Key. Drag it to the walking clip and watch the result! As you can see, the key effect removes the blue color from the clip and only Johnny stays in the video. If he is in the right position or if he doesn’t have the right size, go to the Effect Controls tab and mess around with the Motion options. That’s all! Your little example machinima movie is ready! You can of course add more clips and images and even music or sound to make your own 3D movie! But of course make sure you have the patience; it’s the most important ingredient… Due to the release of the new expansion of the game “World of Warcraft” on which we are based along with the model-viewer and the map-viewer, the model and map-viewer have outdated versions and don’t support the new model file types used by the game anymore. However, a new fan-updated version of the model-viewer can be found on the Internet. It has several bugs though. A lot of the models may crash the program at any time, and may have distorted skins and edges. Also, the particle system doesn’t even work. Buggy, but still, it’s the only way to continue your machinima, and there are several new collections of models, both in the Creature and the Character drop-down menu. An official updated version should be released soon. That concludes the guide regarding the creation of machinima, and next time you want to make a movie, but not as lame as the plain Movie Maker ones, you know what to do… Useful links Here’s a list of links to useful websites regarding machinima: :http://www.wowhead.com/ (A database of World of Warcraft items, which can be used to find something good to equip your Johnny (or Jimmy or Jack or whatever) with) :http://www.wowmodelviewer.org/ (The official site of the World of Warcraft model and map-viewer. It contains the old versions of the programs though. Fan-updated version can be found on the forum.) :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDh6c4dvyBU :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqIPIWYT0wU :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnQ2oUN2Cjo (Video guides on Youtube by Ian Beckman, a “professional” machinima maker. His most known work is “Azerothian Supervillains”, which is strongly recommended to anyone that is looking forward to laugh with his heart!) Theodore Dodoussis Class of 2013 Κατηγορία:Articles 2008-2009